Wednesday, July 25, 2012

The cream of world cycling

Bradley Wiggins, with the aid of team Sky, rode over the cobbled stones of
Paris to win the Tour de France for the first time for a British cyclist. Chris Froome took second place. World champion, Mark Cavendish, won the sprint on the
last stage and was launched into his final assault by Bradley Wiggins. With the
Olympics starting on Friday it was a magnificent effort from a team with gold-dust
in their eyes.

When I was a boy I grew up in the village
of Harworth, North Nottinghamshire on the West Riding border with Yorkshire.
Tommy Simpson was a local hero and lived just down the road from Sandy Mount,
where we lived. Every night he would cycle up our road and do a 30 plus mile
tour of what is now South Yorkshire. It took him about an hour. We, my brother
Charles, Bill Brett and myself, would from time to time cycle to Tickhill
Spital cross-roads where the road to Tickhill is straight and long. We would
wait until we saw Tommy Simpson coming in the distance and see how far up the Bawtry
Road incline we could get before he came zooming past to swiftly disappear
round the corner. Top cyclists have something that separates them from those
who use their bikes for leisure purposes.

I remember Tommy Simpson bringing the
bronze medal he won at the Melbourne Olympics to show Bircotes scout cubs in
1956. He was a popular local figure and Britain’s top cyclist at the time.
Talking to Tommy Godwin in the eighties at his bike shop in Selly Oak I learnt
of a race that Godwin had watched in which Tommy Simpson and a German cyclist
were battling it out well clear of the rest of the field. As Simpson went past
he shouted “Get ‘em in Tommy. I’ve got this guy beaten.” And he did win the
race. Tommy Simpson was the highest British achiever before Bradley Wiggins.

Always knowing my limitations, that I would never be a top cyclist, it did not
stop me from getting on a bike. It is still one of the most pleasant ways to travel,
especially when the weather is good. In late December 1999/2000 I cycled
the North and South Islands of New Zealand linking up on the Wellington/Picton
ferry with a German cyclist, Thomas Hugenschmidt, with whom I stay in touch. So
I let the millennium in 12 hours before my fellow countrymen and women. Later
in 2000 from August to early December I cycled from Birmingham to the
Azerbaijan border but a severe stomach bug curtailed my journey any further. I was heading to Samarkand. I
got a bus back from Tbilisi to the Turkish border, then another to Istanbul.
When I recovered I took my bike on a Niki Lauda plane to Madrid and after
contacting and staying with an old friend cycled from Madrid to central France, finishing
at a village called Ambert. I had been following a trail of hand-made paper and
decided to terminate my journey at the Richard de bas paper mill, where they
still have a set of old stampers. Stampers preceded the Hollander machines for
making pulp-stock.

Hopefully, with the success of British
riders today, more people will take up this healthy pastime. You do not have to be a top cyclist to enjoy the ride.